Another Glorious Day
Woooo Hoooooo, Goooooooooooood Moooorrrrnnnnning, Kuuuuuuuuuuuuuwwwwwaaaaiiiiiiiiiiittttttttttttttt!
It is COOOLLLDDDD this morning again, 4°C/39°F, and the sky is clear. There is a very thin layer of haze on the horizon; it is so clear I can see the freighters far out in the Gulf and the gleam of roofs out on Failaika Island. Woooo Wooooo, a glorious day in Kuwait!
For you non-morning people, I apologize for my enthusiasm and for waking you. 😉
And finally, I have added a Sunrise Series to my catagories, it’s about time, hmmm?
Where Things Go?
This last week I had a lot of shopping to do, and specific things I was looking for. I pretty well know where to look for what I am seeking now, in spite of the fact that the grocery stores here have a different logic than the logic I am used to.
It’s not a right or wrong thing; it is a different cultures thing. I had the same issues when I would be looking for things in the German supermarkets, or the French supermarkets, or even shopping in Florida supermarkets as opposed to West Coast supermarkets.
I was looking for chopped pimentos, (AdventureMan has a yearning for a Southern staple called Pimento Cheese) which I sort of found and sort of didn’t. What I eventually found, in the condiment section, with the pickles, was canned roasted peppers, which I then chopped into tiny pieces.
Most of the time, I don’t have any trouble finding pimentos, but for some reason, the last month or two, I haven’t been able to find them until today. Usually, if I am going to find pimentos, I find them in the same section with tomato paste, hot pepper paste, and spicy Indian pickles. Condiments like mustards, mayonnaises, steak sauces, ketchups and baby foods are all up on top of the frozen foods. (See! I don’t KNOW why!) Today, I actually found them in the American pickle section. I don’t know why.
In the dairy department, there isn’t a yoghurt section, or a milk section, there is a KDD Dairy section and an Al Marai Dairy section, and (there are more) today none of the sections had sour cream, and in fact, they didn’t think they had ever had sour cream although I buy it there all the time.
At this point, I have bought so much “just in case I never see it again, ” that I can’t get a single thing more in my freezer.
There is a deli section, where they sell fresh soft cheese, a huge variety of olives, and big flats of eggs, 30 at a time. In the bread section, they also sell potato chips and taco chips. Soda crackers are sold mixed in with what we think of as cookies, sweet biscuits. Cat food is sold next to the baby food and bottled water. Go figure!
After a while, you just kind of know, you kind of get used to it.
The market we used to go to in France was about 1/3 wine, 1/3 fresh vegetables, cheeses, meats and terrines, and the remaining 1/3 was regular groceries!
(Not my photo. I found it at about.com GoFrance)
Niemoeller and “When They Came for Me. . . “
Today’s quote from A.Word.A.Day:
Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the
tormentor, never the tormented.
-Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate (b.1928)
When I read this quote, I was reminded of Pastor Martin Niemoeller’s poem about Nazi Germany, “When They Came For Me:”
In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.”
We are all by nature cowards. We take the easy way out, we look the other way, we tell ourselves “later” I will do this or that, “later” I will get involved. When our nations and our character slide into the dumps, we have no one but ourselves to blame.
“Hello! My Name is Heather . . . “
Every now and then, one of my readers writes to me. Most of the time, it is on an issue, and behind the blog we have a great conversation. (I learn so much from you, my readers.) 🙂
Occasionally, I will get one that makes the little hairs on the back of my neck rise up. I wish I had saved the one I got that started “Hello! My name is Heather (last name) and I live in (small-town) Iowa, and I would like your permission to share your (wonderful) blog with my friends.”
She went on to tell me a little about herself. I don’t know why – there was something about the letter that made me uncomfortable, and I have learned to trust those feelings.
I wrote to her and told her she was welcome to share my site, that anyone could visit, they were welcome. I didn’t share any personal details in return.
Her next e-mail coming back told me a whole lot about her life, and . . . it didn’t ring true. I don’t know why. When your instincts are telling you something is not right, you just MUST listen.
At the end, she asked who I really was, and where I was from and more oh-now-that-we’re-such-good-friends kinds of questions. Bingo. It felt like the whole thing had been set up to ask me that very question. I wrote back, as I always do, that I blog as Intlxpatr for a reason, and that I protect my anonymity.
Funny. I never heard from “her” again. I don’t believe a word she said, including I don’t know that I was corresponding with a woman, much less a woman named Heather.
Why on earth would anyone target me?
My friends, there are crazy people out there, people who think differently from you and me. No matter how good someone sounds, no matter how trustworthy, this is a virtual world, not a real world, and if you gut tells you to beware – then listen. Listen to that gut feeling, listen to the hairs on the back of your neck, and listen to that uneasiness . . . something is not right.
Given enough time, most scams and cons just can’t keep up the deception.
I once worked for an organization which would give emergency loans. I was pretty good, and pretty fast at putting a loan together, and verifying that the loan was needed. One day, a man came in with a serious problem, and with him was his boss, verifying his need. He had all the right papers, too. I made the loan.
Not two months later his boss came in to me with a hangdog look and said “I have to tell you about (so-and-so).”
He had been dealing drugs and had serious problems. His boss had vouched for him. The guy was clean cut and articulate and knew how to present himself. He had all the right papers – and both his boss and I were totally fooled. The boss brought the guy in to apologize to me – he was on his way to jail and he would never repay the loan; I had to write it off. The con-man looked at me and apologized sincerely, and gave me one piece of really really great advice:
“The reason they call us con-men is because we are really good at what we do. We make you believe us.”
Con-men fail in many other areas of their lives – anything that requires consistency and a long term commitment. They can’t perform under scrutiny over time – it’s mostly wires and mirrors and smoke, and it all falls apart when it is examined too closely.
Con-men also create drama that make you feel YOU have to commit now. They have deadlines, and terrible consequences. When you feel that happening in your life, take a deep breath. Slow things down. When you feel unduly rushed, when someone is pushing you for a quick decision on a major issue – that is the time to SLOW WAY DOWN, to examine closely, to give a situation some time. There are con-men and con-women in every culture.
“Heather” – or whoever “she” really was – has agendas you and I can’t begin to imagine. She/He may need money (they often do!) or your connections. He or she may just like messing with people’s lives.
Listen to your instincts, and take your time. Take a deep breath, relax – YOU set your own timeline. Ask around, ask if anyone you know has had experience with a similar approach, especially on the internet. Protect yourself. Protect yourself. Protect yourself.
-Nzm – You’re It: Mermaid of Mangaf Update
Here’s what I love – a comment on my blog, buried way back on a post I wrote almost a year ago ( Mermaid of Mangaf Update) , which was an update on a previous post – Mermaid of Mangaf. And the comment is so good, contains so much more information that I don’t have, that I can use it as a blog entry, lazy lazy me! Wooo Hoooo, for my readers and commenters. -Nzm, today, you are my guest blogger!
Hey all! We went to visit the mermaid a few months ago, and the management was really kind and gave us a whole tour of the place. They showed us two villas, one furnished and the other plain. The villas are absolutely gorgeous, very luxurious and spaceous. The look and feel is completely different from the rest of the housing in kuwait — the Mermaid encompasses a very western style/feel of living. (You might feel as if you are no longer in kuwait!).. The roof contains the pool, party hall with a plasma tv, gym, saunas, squash courts, lockers, a massage centre and even a cafeteria…The view of the sea from the roof is breath taking. And yes there is also a car elevator which tenants can use (at the time we visited they had not finished installing the interiors of the elevator)
However, the prices are quite high for each villa.. The villas at the very bottom are selling for 310,000 KD and the ones at the very top are for 370,000 KD with ranging prices for villas in between (you cannot simply “rent” the villas). Also, you must pay 90% of price on purhase, and EVERY MONTH you must pay 500 KD for maintenance.
Honestly, as beautiful as the mermaid is, I dont think its worth THAT much money.. (370,000 KD converts to about 1,365,152 Canadian dollars!) I’m sure you can find much better houses for that amount of money in Kuwait..I know that the villas are stunning but the prices are set too high.
Recently, we have heard that Tijara changed its pricing and now you can actually rent the villas for about 2,600 KD/month (this is simply what I have heard)…
I live very close to the Mermaid and pass it every day, and I believe that it is still as empty as it was before.. the clothes some people have seen hanging on the balcony are those of the workers who stay around the villas for cleaning/maintenance. It appears quite empty.
I do not know the current situation of the Mermaid, but if someone could update us that us that would be nice. I hope my information has helped!
Sue Monk Kidd: Mermaid Chair
It took me a long time to buy this book, and an even longer time to read it. I kept reading the description, and I didn’t like it at all. But it kept popping up on the “recommended for you” list on Amazon, and I had this inner feeling that I was meant to read it, even if I didn’t particularly care to.
After treating myself to Leon and Bowen, I thought now was the time.
At first I found The Mermaid Chair a little Anne Rivers Siddon-ish – and I like Anne Rivers Siddons, and I don’t like imitations, which this felt like. And I thought to myself “Anne Rivers Siddons does it better.”
I kept reading, though. The book was intriguing, and I wanted to know what happened next.
Sue Monk Kidd wrote another book I really liked called The Secret Life of Bees in which I learned a lot about bees, and found the story wonderfully redemptive.
Sue Monk Kidd and Anne Rivers Siddons also share a love of the mystical, and the mystical in religion, and the mystical in human relationships, and the mystical in the sisterhood of women, all of which I find fascinating, and parts of which I would like to believe myself.
In this book, there is a lot going on. The main character is feeling stagnant and small, and invisible in her marriage. Her daughter has left for college, and she is oddly unable to find things in life to interest her. Then, her mother cuts off her finger, her mother’s friends call her to come to Egret Island, and she finds herself suddenly caught up in a whirlwind of emotions and torments that she can barely understand.
She has avoided returning to her Egret Island home to avoid the pain of her father’s death when she was 12, and her mother’s decent into moodiness and madness. She returns, meets a monk and falls in love, copes badly with her mother’s demons, and fights her way through her own personal crisis.
Sue Monk Kidd makes it all work. The work floats with artistic references; Gaugain, Matisse, Chagall, their mysterious, delightful women in particular float throught this book in Mermaid guises, and our heroine, Jessie Sullivan, discovers her own mermaid-within.
I won’t say that this is the best book I have ever read – it isn’t. I will say that I loved reading it. I loved the feel of living on Egret Island, with the tides and the birds and the small town friends, the local dog, the raininess and windiness of it all. I feel like I was there. I know the graveyard, I know the winding paths, I know those little golf carts everyone uses to get around. I know what it’s like to have to take a ferry to get to the mainland, I know the tidal currents of life’s more overwhelming moments.
As our Jessie binds her marriage back together, she says this:
Each day we pick our way through unfamiliar terrain. Hugh and I did not resume our old marriage – that was never what I wanted, and it was not what Hugh wanted either – rather we laid it aside and began a whole new one. Our love is not the same. It feels both young and old to me. It feels wise, as an old woman is wise after a long life, but also fresh and tender, something we must cradle and protect. We have become closer in some ways, the pain we experienced weaving tenacious lines of intimacy, but there is a separateness as well, the necessary distance. . . . .
I tell him, smiling, that it was the mermaids who brought me home. I mean, to the water and the mud and the pull of the tides in my own body. To the solitary island submerged so long in myself, which I desperately needed to find. But I also try to explain they brought me home to him. I’m not sure he understands any more than I do how belonging to myself allows me to belong more truly to him. I just know it’s true.”
This is a good read. It’s worth its reputation, it’s worth picking up and reading through. While some might think it’s very much a chick book, I suspect men reading it might also find a lot with which to identify. You can find this book at Amazon.com (disclosure: yes, I own shares in Amazon) for about $11.20.
Tarek Rajab Calligraphy Re-Visit
Oh, the Tarak Rajab Calligraphy Museum is such a treasure! This time we went back just to have time to watch the entire film on calligraphy, the cutting of the quills and the mixing of the ink, how the paper is prepared and burnished, how ornamentation is developed . . . every time we visit this museum, we see something new, and we learn something new.
This time, I was looking for details. Oh WOW.
Here is a little of what I found:
Kuwait is blessed to have such a gem of a museum, and open to the public free of charge, in a beautiful building, with gracious spaces. You can find more information on their website for both museums (The Tarak Rajab Museum is just around the corner) at The Tarak Rajab Museum website.
Woo Hooo Al Ahmadi
Great sign, Al Ahmadi!
I would love to see a Keep Kuwait Clean sign, maybe a series of them. The one I see features one of the beautiful, pristine beaches, and then the green green of the gulf. That contrast always takes my breath away, and it breaks my heart to see them filthy with fast-food wrappers, and detritus washed up from the boats.
Nicole B / Rainmountain, who has a photography and blog site has a one woman campaign to keep her segment of the beach clean in Mahboula. God bless you, Nicole!I think many of the schools also have beach clean-up days, and some clubs, too.
What would your sign feature? I’m not very artistic – those of you who are, would you do a sign, link to this blog entry so we can come visit?
New Minarets in Fehaheel
I love going out to Fehaheel; it’s kind of got a wild west feeling, with no regard to traffic lanes, no regard to traffic laws, it’s just not the city – it’s a step back in time, even with the beautiful Al Koot and Al Manshar Malls.
Two years ago, they tore down the old minaret on the mosque in the center of town on the Gulf Road, and the wrecker that tried to knock the minaret down got tangled – and fell over! It took months to clean that mess up, and then for the last two years they have been building the new “> twin minarets.
Recently the scaffolding came down. Here is how they look now – a serious facelift for a delightful old lady.
Bowen: Cruzatte and Maria
Peter Bowen’s tales of Montana in transition are an acquired taste. When I first started reading them, at my sister’s recommendation, I had a hard time getting past the dialect. The main character, Gabriel DuPre, speaks English differently; he is Metis, a mixture of French, Indian and who knows what, here before America was America, as he says “long time gone.”
You get used to it. It still makes me think he should be in New Orleans, speaking as he does, it sounds very Cajun, but you get used to it.
Peter Bowen’s Gabriel DuPre is another treat to myself (like Donna Leon.) Reading the latest book I bought, saved for just this time, a cold wintery January, brightened my outlook considerably.
The first book I read, Wolf, No Wolf had to do with environmentalists putting wolves back into the mountains where once they had flourished, but where now, for a couple centuries, people have been raising cattle. Guess what? Hungry wolves love cattle. It makes for some very hostile feelings.
That theme – local culture against intruding environmentalists – continues in this book, where DuPre is hired as a consultant on a film being made about Lewis and Clark. The locals in the Coronado area are no happier with all the film crews and tourists than the ranchers were with the wolves – and people end up dead.
In addition, DuPre’s friend Benetsee and his daughter Maria spend time together in the sweat lodge, and later, his daughter, Marie, sees a mound and is revisited by a vision she had. She tells her dad, DuPre, to dig, and he uncovers a trove of treasures cached by the Lewis and Clark expedition. Partly, it is the incursion of the spiritual and supernatural that I find so intriguing in these books; there is a reality, and then a greater reality, and they co-exist. Bowen makes it seem and feel entirely natural. I love it.
The book has some highly entertaining, laugh-out-loud moments, takes great pokes at the eco-tourist, and at the same time deals with some serious issues. We get to hear DuPre fiddle his old Voyageur songs, we get to hear what people are saying at the local bar, where cheeseburgers are the plat du jour. It is a great way to pass a winter’s day.
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